CBS/NYT poll: Romney and Obama tied

4/18/12 7:16 AM EDT

Mirroring a trend in other recent polls, the latest survey from CBS News and the New York Times shows a 2012 contest that has narrowed to a dead heat:

Mitt Romney has closed the gap with President Obama among registered voters, a CBS News/New York Times poll released Wednesday found, putting the former Massachusetts governor in a dead heat with the president for the White House.

Mr. Obama and Romney each received support from 46 percent of registered voters when asked who they would vote for if the election were held today. In March, a CBS News/New York Times survey found that Mr. Obama held a slight advantage over Romney of 47 percent to 44 percent.

That's consistent with Pew's polling that shows Obama's margin closing from 12 points to 4 points and Gallup data that actually has Romney gaining the upper hand over the last week.

This is what you'd expect to see at the outset of the general election, as the challenger candidate solidifies his stature as his party's nominee, but before either campaign really unloads on the other in a comprehensive, expensive way. But it's helpful to Romney to get a spate of polling that may reassure voters and GOP leaders that his poor favorability rating won't stop him from making this thing competitive.

The cautionary note in all this is that we've seen some pretty big swings in month-to-month polling recently, with Obama's approval numbers dropping by 9 points over the course of one month, then recovering, and his lead over Romney oscillating from high single digits to zero and back. It's possible the electorate is really swinging around that much. It's also possible that we're dealing with a lot of sampling variation and oversensitivity in polling that obscures what everybody already knows: that this is a close election between two candidates with big liabilities, and is likely to remain that way for the duration.